The City Is My Beat

ONE OF THE sorrier aspects of the Willie Brown administration is the politicization of nearly everything. Some ideas are good and some are bad, but they are all played out in the arena of favors and friendships and backroom deals.

Because Da Mayor is such a dominant personality -- if only he would use these powers for good, I keep saying to myself -- that means that everything is judged by its political aura. Who's for it? Who's against it? Who will take credit for it? Will the right firms get the jobs that will flow from it? Those are the questions that dominate the discourse.

And so it was with the Laguna Honda bond measure. When the idea was floated by a political operative, it was unclear whether it had anything to do with the hospital at all. Maybe it was payback. Maybe it was really about a previous political dispute, in which landlords either would or would not pass on the cost of bond issues to their tenants. This deal superseded another deal, and some people switched sides, and some people broke promises, and the bond issue came and went before anyone had time to eat a bagel, and in the meantime there are a lot of old sick people in a beautiful building waiting for help from their friends and neighbors.

How well we take care of our parents is a measure of our success as a society. Metaphorically, the people in Laguna Honda are our parents. Our parents are more important than a museum, even, or a ballpark.

I am sorry that the Laguna Honda bond measure was perceived in purely political terms. I have no idea whether the specifics of the plan were ill-advised (some say yes, some say no, and the division seems to be along -- guess what -- political lines), but clearly some plan is necessary, and quick.

HAVE YOU EVER been to Laguna Honda? It's an amazing place. The facilities may be old-fashioned and hazardous, but the building is astonishing. Built along principles first enunciated by Florence Nightingale, the rooms are huge, light and airy, the hallways broad and serene.

It offers dignity. As ramshackle as it is even now, it speaks through its architecture to its indigent residents -- you matter. You deserve these vistas, these breezes, these simple pleasures.

Plus, it's a place where the collective "we" take care of those who cannot take care of themselves. We romanticize children so much just now; we spend billions to make sure that their every precious waking moment is filled with glory -- how about the folks at the other end of the scale?

Maybe the mayor and the supes can exercise some leadership on this one? Forget who gets the credit; just do the right thing.

IN OTHER NEWS: This letter from Russell Keimer: "Have you checked out the traffic nightmare that's been created by the new theater at Van Ness and O'Farrell? How the city boneheads could have approved this is beyond comprehension.

"Not only are the garage entrance and exit both on the same street -- busy, busy O'Farrell -- but the garage exit is uphill, to the west of the entrance. So you've got traffic trying to get over to the left to go in, blocking the cars trying to get out. At times the backups extend out into the intersection of Van Ness and O'Farrell.

"Nightly there are scenes of road rage, horns blowing and general chaos. I happen to live across the street, and after more than a year of nonstop construction noise (they worked dawn to midnight, never mind the city code about such things), I thought we'd be OK. What they've managed to create has all the charm of a --" and here we must end the quotation, since the thing he mentions is so uncharming as to be a violation of the reader's right to eat cereal comfortably.

So, maybe, at least switch the entrance and exit, huh?

Why not forget about the fighting and the pummeling; why not act?
Wanna put my tender heart in a blender, watch it spin around to a beautiful
jrc@sfgate.com
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